Church of God, New World Ministries

The Miracle Of Pearl Harbor

Just 68 short years ago the United States of America was plunged into World War II at Pearl Harbor. In January, 1942, all news was bad. Read in this eye-opening article, the one reason why the Allies were allowed to win that war, and why they have not won a war since!

This story was told by Mr. Lynn E. Torrance, who was a prisoner of war in the Philippines and after surviving his captivity, later became a minister in God’s Church.

Can you believe it now? In January, 1942 – just 67 years ago the U.S. Army and Navy lacked even the power to stop a Japanese invasion of the West Coast of the United States.

The Pacific Fleet was all but destroyed. The Army was untrained, ill equipped. It was America’s darkest hour. Secret plans, known only to President Roosevelt and a few selected advisors, called for the evacuation of the entire United States west of the Rocky Mountains should Japan invade the mainland.

Just how and why almost certain victory was miraculously wrenched from the hands of the German-Japanese Axis is a startling story. Believe it or not, it involved the old World Tomorrow broadcast, and why millions of people around the world heard the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

One month before the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, the American troopship, the Hugh L. Scott, made a strange, unscheduled three-day stop in Honolulu. A man by the name of L. E. Torrance was on that ship. (I will explain later who he was.)

Mr. Torrance was in the 5th Air Base Group, who wondered, “why.” After three days in Honolulu they were steaming toward Manila, his intelligence officer Col. Tally, revealed to them highly secret information when he said, “We were detained for three days in Honolulu because the Army and Navy High Command expected Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor on Nov. 6th”. The Colonel startled us: “The U.S. has been trying to goad Japan into attacking us for some time.”

“The American people hate war,” he said, “but if Japan will just declare war first, the U.S. will then become aroused and will be willing to fight back. Otherwise, he said, the complacent American public will not wholeheartedly support a war to stop Hitler and Japan.” The Colonel warned, “if the U.S. doesn’t get into the war to help Britain and Russia, our only two possible allies will be conquered by Hitler.” After Hitler conquers all of Europe, he will then invade the United States. But the American people are unprepared for war,” he concluded.

How right he was! The Colonel divulged more top-secret information as he went on to say that the danger of war was so great that the Army and Navy brass in Honolulu debated whether to send the Hugh L. Scott and its cargo of troops back to San Francisco or on to Australia.

“The decision,” he said, “was finally made to send us on the Philippines because the Hugh L. Scott has on board tanks and airplanes which MacArthur’s army in the Philippines will need if Japan launches an attack against Manila.”

Mr. Torrance arrived at the Del Monte airstrip on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the first of December, 1941. World War II began for the United States six days later when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and Clark Field on the island of Luzon.

When the Japanese invaded Luzon, the equipment we left sitting on the dock in Manila was sent to the fighting men on Bataan, who desperately needed every gun they could get their hands on. Even though we were unarmed and unprepared for war, we still expected the mighty U.S. Air Force to fly in from the United States.

In preparation for their arrival, we began feverishly building airstrips. The island of Mindanao became a complex of thirteen top-quality, heavy-duty airfields. We built high-quality bomb shelters, and blasted out a large airplane hangar in a mountainside.

The American planes did not arrive, but the Japanese army did! We, our airstrips, our hangers, and our bomb shelters were all captured on May 10, 1942. We had been prisoners for more than a year when we heard one of the most astounding stories ever told, the story which revealed the truth about the “Miracle of Pearl Harbor.”

We heard this astounding story from an English-speaking interpreter, a cousin of the Emperor. This Japanese officer startled us by revealing, “The Imperial Japanese High Command now realizes that we will eventually lose the war.” He said bitterly, “The Germans have let us down.”

According to the Emperor’s cousin, two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Japanese spies in Moscow sent a secret report to Tokyo warning that “our German allies have suffered a disastrous defeat in the battle for Moscow.”

This report from Japanese spies in Russia revealed how Nazi armies were hurled back by a surprisingly well equipped warmly clad Siberian army which Hitler and his generals did not know existed. But the “die” was already cast! This Japanese spies’ report from Moscow came to Tokyo two weeks too late. By the time the full magnitude of the colossal defeat suffered by the German armies on the Moscow front became known, the Japanese High Command had already bombed Pearl Harbor. They had already committed themselves to fighting a losing battle.

Many of our Japanese guards, who were unaware of German defeats in Russia, were constantly telling their American captives that they expected to live in California after the war was over.

The cousin of the Emperor was not deceived. He had been listening to the news. He admitted that Japan’s German allies had just suffered another major disaster at Stalingrad, where the entire 6th German army was either killed or captured by the Russians. That is why he said, “The Japanese now realize that it is only a matter of time until Germany is defeated. Without the help of Hitler, the Japanese army cannot hope to conquer the U.S.”

“We made a fatal mistake in bombing Pearl Harbor without attacking the U.S. West Coast at the same time. Had we invaded the West Coast early in the summer of 1941, you would never have sent thousands of tanks and airplanes, countless guns and ammunition to Russia. You would have been forced to use these weapons to defend your own country”.

“It’s obvious now,” he said,”that without large-scale American help, the Russians could not have kept Hitler from annihilating both their army and their entire population. It is too late now. WE have already scattered our troops all over Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific where they are dying like flies from malaria, gonorrhea, and syphilis.”

He then made the alarming statement, “After conquering Russia, the Germans planned to spend a few days conquering England; then they planned to blitz across northern Greenland on into Canada, while we Japanese were invading Alaska and the West Coast.”

The Emperor’s cousin said, “If everything had gone like we planned, we would have struck you before you had time to arm and train an army.” With astonishing frankness, he revealed top-secret Japanese plans. After all, we were “American pigs,” doomed to die.

Cold-bloodedly he said, “Germany had promised us the western half of the U.S. for our part in the war. In order to inflame all Asia into backing our propaganda slogan, ‘Asia for the Asiatics,’ the Japanese army had been instructed to kill every white man and woman in the Orient and in the western half of the United States, just as soon as victory was certain.”

Thinking we would never live to tell the story, and that nobody would believe us if we did, he boasted, “After destroying the U.S. nation, we Japanese planned to conquer the rest of China, marshal the millions of Chinese into a fighting army and then after Hitler relaxed in a world at peace, the Japanese Imperial High Command planned to strike Germany a surprise blow.”

Regretfully he added, “If we just hadn’t made a tactical mistake, we could have conquered the world.” Almost apologetically, the Japanese lieutenant went on to explain the Japanese tactical mistake. “We could have destroyed the United States if we had just landed our forces on the West Coast of the U.S. in a surprise attack. Army intelligence now realizes that the Japanese army could have taken much of the Rocky Mountain region before you Americans could have equipped and trained your peace-loving people to fight.”

But he was wrong. The Japanese should have attacked the Russian flank in Siberia, and forced Stalin to fight a two-front war and helped Germany conquer Russia before they attacked the U.S. Hitler urged the Japanese to attack Russian Siberia, and leave the U.S. alone. But the Japanese had their own plan to conquer the world.

Admittedly, Japan had long wanted to have as part of their empire the entire North American continent, but the wily Japanese military strategists decided against trying to fight both Communist Russia and the U. S. at the same time.

The Japanese had always been afraid that if they invaded the U.S., the Russians would stab them in the back by invading Manchuria. This is why, as part of their preparations for war, the Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, signed a treaty of neutrality with Stalin on April 13, 1941. The Japanese hoped this treaty, coupled with Russian fear of Hitler, would keep them from having to fight a two-front war.

This treaty of neutrality aroused the American government, but not to action. Washington was content to merely wonder if the Japanese signed this treaty of neutrality with Russia as preparation to attack British and American possessions in the Pacific.

The Japanese preparation to attack the U.S. were suddenly intensified on June 22, 1941, when at 3:30 in the morning, Germans struck Russia a surprise blow. The German attack overran the border at most places before the Russians could organize a defense. In fact, most of the 3,800,000 Russian prisoners taken by the Germans were taken in the first few weeks of the campaign (William I. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 952-953).

Because this attack on Russia appeared to be fantastically successful, the Japanese no longer feared a Russian “stab in the back” after they had begun attacking the U.S. The Japanese war lords began gleefully preparing to launch their long-planned attack on the U.S.! Japan hastened its preparations to capture needed raw materials in Southeast Asia before they and their ally, Hitler, launched a direct invasion of the United States’ shores.

General Tojo, the Japanese Prime Minister, instructed his ambassador to Washington, Admiral Nomura, to secure from the American government approval to conquer Indonesia and all of the Southeast Asia and India. The American government refused to be frightened by thinly veiled threats of war, by what amounted to an ultimatum. The Japanese suddenly began throwing threats of war at the United States. That these threats of war were not idle threats was made evident when Secretary of State Hull’s cryptographers, on Nov. 19, 1941, deciphered the notorious “winds” message to Admiral Nomura from Tokyo. Tokyo warned Admiral Nomura that when the Japanese newscaster on the short-wave Tokyo broadcast said the words, “East wind, rain,” Japan was about to attack the United States.

Unknown to the United States, on Nov. 25, 1941, the Japanese carrier task force sailed for Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were further encouraged to attack Pearl Harbor when last minute reports out of Russia stated that on “Dec. 2, (1941) a reconnaissance battalion of the 258th (Nazi) Infantry Division had penetrated to Khimki, a suburb of Moscow, within sight of the spires of the Kremlin” (William I. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 863).

Assuming their potential enemy, Russia, had already been defeated by their German allies, the Japanese government gave the command: “Bomb Pearl Harbor.”

But unknown to General Tojo and his war lords, the communist general, Marshal Zhukov, launched, on the day before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, a gigantic counteroffensive on the Moscow front which reeled the German armies back in the bitter cold and snow.

“Fresh Soviet divisions which German intelligence had no inkling of were continually being thrown into battle”(William I. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 855). This fresh, well-trained, well-equipped Soviet army changed the course of history. The Nazis were stunned! “Where did this large, well-clothed, well-equipped Russian army come from?” they asked. Little did the Nazi realize that their own ally, Japan, was responsible for the colossal disaster they suffered on the Moscow front?

Russian spies in Japan had somehow discovered that Japan planned to attack the U.S. at Pearl Harbor about December 7, 1941. The Russians also learned that the Japanese had politely refused Hitler’s demand to attack Russian troops on the Siberian border. The Japanese were “dead set” on destroying the Pacific fleet of the U.S. and capturing all of the Southeast Asia and India. They were determined to “feather their own nest” and not Hitler’s

When Russian spies discovered this fanatical Japanese determination to attack the U.S., Stalin hastily withdrew his army of close to a million men from the Manchurian border and brought them over the trans-Siberian railway to Moscow, just in time to turn the tide of battle against the Germans in early December, 1941.

The Japanese High Command now realizes that if they had invaded Siberia, the peace-loving U.S. would have remained neutral until both Japan and Hitler were ready to launch a surprise invasion of the North American continent. They also realize that if they had attacked the Russian army on the Siberian border, Stalin would have been forced to fight on two fronts at once. Stalin then would not have been able to bring his well-equipped Siberian army to the Moscow front in time to stop the Nazis. European Russia would have fallen.

Because the Germans had badly mauled the Russian army, the Russians were not strong enough to fight both Germany and Japan at the same time. The power of Communist Russia would have been destroyed.

After annihilating the Russian armies, and before alarmed Washington statesmen could have armed and trained an American army of defense, Hitler and Japan planned to launch a world-shaking attack on the U. S. mainland. But the Japanese made the wrong decision. They neither invaded Siberia as Hitler wanted them to, nor did they invade the West Coast of the U.S. as hindsight led them to believe they should have. They bombed Pearl Harbor instead, without invading the West Coast of the U.S., giving the United States valuable time to equip and train an army.

Strange as it may seem, the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese was a miracle which saved the United States from defeat. Before Pearl Harbor, American naval strategy had been decided by battleship admirals, who assured the American statesmen that battleships would win the war.

Alexander De Seversky quotes Admiral William V. Pratt as saying on June 11, 1941, “A battleship is no heavily armored that when a bomb strikes it, the force of the explosion goes upward, into the air, and very little damage is done” (Victory Through Air Power, p. 173).

Americans utterly failed to understand the importance of the airplane. This is why American military aviations was primitive and haphazard when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It took the disaster of sinking several battleships, cruisers, and destroyers at Pearl Harbor to convince the American government that the airplane was a formidable weapon in war.

The importance of the airplane was further recognized a few days after Pearl Harbor when the British battleship the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise were sunk by bombs off Indonesia.

The American government immediately ordered production of airplanes to be greatly increased. During World War II, the U. S. produced well over 200,000 war planes of all kinds and descriptions. Surprising as it may seem, the U. S. actually shipped Soviet Russia more airplanes than Germany herself produced during WWII.

Military analysts now realize that if Japan had held back and not attacked the U. S., but had helped Germany defeat Russia instead, the American nation would not have built a strong air force in time to stop Germany and Japan. Our admirals had planned to build three navies instead. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor proved the battleship useless against overwhelming air superiority. The German High Command correctly assumed that, backed by vastly superior air power, they and their Japanese allies could have quickly overrun our untried, untrained, and unequipped army.

Stop and think! What would have happened if the “Jap” bombers hadn’t sunk most of our Pearl Harbor fleet? Without a large air force, the U. S. – not to mention the rest of the world -- would have been helpless victims of Japanese and Germany aggression, but by attacking Pearl Harbor before they were ready to invade the U. S. the Japanese alerted the American High Command to the importance of air power.

The failure of the Germans to conquer Russia in 1941 gave the U. S. at least two badly needed years’ time, time to arm and train the most powerful armed forces a nation has ever had. We were blessed, not blitzed by the bomb!

This sneak attack on Pearl Harbor backfired. Instead of defeating the U. S., this sneak attack aroused the sleeping American giant to action. It was American air power which hammered the Germans and Japanese into helplessness and saved the American nation from the total annihilation planned by Hitler and Japan.

Could anything be any plainer? The Great God inspired these Japanese blunders. He did not want the Japanese to win World War II. Why?

The Bible makes clear the answer. “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14). Even though by 1945 this Gospel was being preached over the radio to part of the U. S., it was not yet being preached to all nations.

The Great God intervened in the affairs of men because prophecy (Matt. 24:14) must be fulfilled. The work of God, the work of publishing the Gospel message to the entire world, had already begun in the United States. Should this United States have fallen, God’s work would have been stopped.

This Gospel is now being preached, and the prophecy of Matthew 24:14 is right now before your eyes being fulfilled. The time of God’s intervention is almost at hand. The end of this age is fast approaching.

God will not save us from this next war unless we really turn to believe and trust in the Living God who rules the heaven and the earth. Unless we as a people repent now, we will not be saved by divine intervention from the sudden, imagination-defying nuclear bomb destruction and national captivity planned by the fast-rising ten-nation power of Europe!

God won’t be on our side in this next war unless we get on His side now! All the tearful prayers of a disobedient, God-rejecting people will not induce God to withdraw the terrible punishment He has prophesied for our rebellious nations if don’t repent now.

It will be too late to pray then. God won’t see bloody hands lifted up to Him in desperate supplication.

If the people of this nation reject the preaching of the True Gospel and the Truth of God now, God will be through fighting for us! God will be ready to force our people into submission to Him.

But what about you? You, personally, can be saved from the coming destruction prophesied for our nation today. But you have to repent now before it is too late! Before God begins to take frightful measures to force His people to repent nationally. The day of the attack begins will be too late. The way to escape the coming prophesied great tribulation is to turn around now, forsake your ways, your false religion and your society, and put all your trust for safety in the Living God by obeying His laws now!

What have you to lose by turning to God? You have your life, this physical life, and eternal life to gain.

 
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